Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Updated AncestryDNA Results

AncestryDNA has updated their genetic matching algorithms, and has modified the autosomal DNA matching results for their customers.  Information about this update is in http://c.ancestry.com/cs/media/dna-apr2016-new-matching.pdf.  They also have a blog post at  http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2016/05/02/ancestrydnas-cutting-edge-science-gets-even-sharper/ with the same information, but readers can comment on the blog post.

My AncestryDNA results have changed a bit.  I wrote AncestryDNA Changes Are Coming on 21 April 2016, and summarized my test results and match counts.

Here is my AncestryDNA home screen:



The message above the Ethnicity Estimate is:

"Great news! Your list of DNA matches has been updated and is more precise than ever. We've applied some of our latest scientific advancements, powered by the world's largest consumer DNA database, to deliver this valuable update to you.Learn more about these improvements. Tell us what you think"

*  The Ethnicity Estimate has not changed.
*  The number of Shared Ancestor Hints has increased from 109 to 116.
*  The number of 4th Cousins or closer has increased from 188 to 226.
*  The number of pages of DNA matches has increased from 132 to 158 (about 7,900).

Further down the home screen are the New Ancestor Discoveries and the DNA Circles:


I retained all three of my New Ancestry Discoveries (not shown above), and all six of my DNA Circles. I don't think any of my DNA Circle members were lost.

On the home page, I clicked on the "Settings" gear icon, and saw:


The first item in the "Actions" column is to "Download Expired DNA Matches."  I clicked on that, and a CSV file was downloaded with eight entries of the DNA matches I lost.  They were all from the Shared Ancestry Hints.

So it appears I lost 8 Shared Ancestry Hints, and gained 15 Shared Ancestry Hints, resulting in an increase of 7 overall.  Three of them were for one ancestral couple - Samuel and Abigail (Fletcher) Whitney - for some reason.

Without a chromosome browser on AncestryDNA, the Shared Ancestry Hints are the most useful to me.  I have perused many of the family trees of the 4th Cousins or closer matches, and rarely find information that can tie me to the match person.  Either they have not enough persons in their tree, or I or they have a "hole" in our genealogy research that we cannot fill.  Then there are the folks who don't have an Ancestry Member Tree.


================================

The URL for this post is:   http://www.geneamusings.com/2016/05/updated-ancestrydna-results.html

Copyright (c) 2016, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.


3 comments:

Kathleen Moore said...

Thanks for staying on top of this Randy. I checked mine and it says I have no expired matches. I did lose a circle and gained two. I still have my shared match with the members of the lost circle. Which confuses me, if we still have shared DNA and a shared hint, shouldn't we still be in a circle together?

DanniDoodle said...

Before the update I had one AncestryDNA match in the 2nd cousin category. This was accurate, because she really is my 2nd cousin. Now she has dropped down to the AncestryDNA 3rd cousin category. Go figure! I'm not in any DNA circles, before or after.

Lori Gordon said...

I'm apparently in that "small number" of folks who lost a significant number of matches. I had 121 shared ancestor matches and today I have 98, which includes 5 new ones, so I lost 28 (over 20%). Only 5 show up in my expired matches, though all of my previous shared ancestor matches had notes attached to them. I also lost 5 DNA circles. I hope they get it straightened out.